Winterking (1987)
Page 30
came to him without his seeking it. It did not matter whose
name. There was a woman, and a man. There was water and
darkness, a child about to be born and a man dying.
It did not matter whose death.
He could feel his breath squeezing out.
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“Is that you?” he asked, whispering soundlessly, because
now he had no breath at all.
The hands that held him dug into his neck.
"Please,” he said meekly.
Their dark shapes, though scarcely bigger than himself,
loomed over him. They were cradling his head and pulling it.
He felt the vertebra crack, heard it splitting. He smelled the
quick, sour exhalation of air rushing under him and, for one
last moment, looked back on the red, pumping stalk of his
neck.
It was fine. The breeze had dropped. Its cold breath was
gone from her breasts and her legs. The branches stretched
invitingly toward the pale windless dawn. Smiling, she hurried along them, mounting from starlight to shadow and back into light. About her the tree was thick with singing birds,
with blackbirds and sparrows. Above her the crows shook out
their splendid wings. The women, walking close beside her,
were fair. The world would always be as it had been in her
childhood, when the dreams had gone with the morning, and
the man, who, like the God who had made her, was not even a
memory. She would no longer dream of him. She would no
longer grieve for what, now unremembered, was lost.
On the cold bank below something lifted its head.
She did not mean to look but it called to her.
Nora stiffened.
“Woman!” it cried.
There was something moving under the tree. She saw
the tender crown of his forehead. His tousled hair made him
appear younger than he was. Yet she knew him. Surely she
had always known. His skin was pale; his eyes, watching her
nakedness, much too innocent. Uncertain, she made herself
laugh.
"Nora,” he whispered, finding her name.
“He is not here,” she called back.
The boy’s small face darkened, as though he felt she was
deceiving him.
She did not need to ask the reason why he had come,
but she did ask.
“Why,” she whispered, “should he be where I am?”
His eyes looked up.
“You followed him.”
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W INTERING
She laughed again, more bitterly. “With little hope,” she
said, “and no more chance than you of finding him.” There
was a touch of defiance in her voice but her mind raced,
trying to think of a way to flee from him and yet terrified that
he would hear her thoughts.
Indeed, her thoughts lay before him, as the thoughts of
all living things came to him. Even then he would have wept
for pity of her. He took no joy in the killing. In the gray
twilight he had made, he gathered the dead. In the halls of
blackened stone, he kept therti. It was the Redd Man who
did the slaughter. But Wyck had brought his fearful servant to
the Great House, ringed by its walls and a wood, and set him
there within a hedge beyond his reach. Thwarted, Duinn’s
face was weary but his jaw was set.
He lifted his head.
Then at last, in the shadow of his cheek, she saw the
cheerless, grizzled color of his hair and the long hands partly
hidden in his cloak; and where the cloak was parted, she saw
the ax.
“There was a man,” he said, “who would have loved
you.”
There was a silence.
“In the house,” he said. His grimness softened, for a
moment he looked a boy again.
“What do you need of me?” she asked.
“I would have you bring me where he is,” he said.
Her perch in the tree was high above him. Still, she
shrank back. She said: “Lord, I have come too far.”
The sky was even higher than she was. But she wondered if even that were high enough. With stubborn terror her mind sought a place more distant.
It was almost morning. The setting moon had dropped
within the maze of limbs; slipped in between the branches,
a blade of its wan light, touching her fingers, made them
visible. The feathers sprouted from her nails. Feathers grew
without pause from her wrists and arms. With one wild push,
she brought them up. In the first silver chill of morning their
hard, bright edges caught the air.
"Lady,” he murmured,
But in that vast place the light was empty. Even the tree
that from the beginning in countless worlds had rooted at his
will was gone; only the man was left.
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An icy wind blew cold against the bank. Lodged between the stones, the white body of a crow, grim with frost, lay frozen stiff.
For a moment Duinn gazed at it. But if there had been
pity in those eyes, when he turned them toward Greenchurch,
it was gone.
In the final hour, in that gentle darkness which comes
before dawn, there was a stillness. Wykeham watched the
men before him. The table was cleared, the bottles emptied
and returned to the shelf. Grumbling, the Duke examined
his watch. Morag mopped his damp forehead. But nothing
was said. In the hearth the last live coal glowed once faintly,
then went out.
When the stillness was deepest, Longford’s tired blue
eyes filled with tears.
Wykeham laid a hand on his arm.
“It is the worst time,” Wykeham said. “The hour when
death seems most welcome.”
The minister’s face twisted. “It is not for myself,” he
said. “I would not care for myself, if I were certain. If I
knew— ”
“Then let him tell you,” Hunt said.
Longford’s head came up in astonishment.
“Tell me what?”
Wykeham looked at him. No muscle in his long face
changed but he avoided the question.
"At dawn there will be a wind,” he said.
Fred Norfolk groaned. He had kept out one last glass for
himself and now he drank it. “By Christ,” he said loudly,
“there is always a wind. A queer wind, blowing up mischief.”
He put his glass back down on the table and stared at it. “But
it wasn’t a wind that I looked for,” he complained. “It was a
war, I thought.” He waved his hand toward the window. “It
was what they thought, those men on the lawn. Staying up all
night, waiting just like we were waiting.” He grunted. For a
long moment he studied Wykeham in silence. “God damn it
all,” he said at last, bitterly, “a man can’t fight wind.”
“It will be a great wind,” Hunt said, “with the dead
riding it.”
“Which dead?”
No one looked to see who had spoken, for each had had
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the same thought. Each sat very still, remembering, peering
into nothingness and trying to think of a way to keep, for
good or ill, what had been.
Amelia, Holmes w
hispered.
Nora!
Olivia!
Plum!
Wykeham had shut his eyes, but not against them. He
could feel the fierceness of their longing. Before him, even
with his lids clamped shut, he saw the lonely tangle of their
separate lives; saw Longford in his bed, with Plum beside
him; saw the little room of Harwood's study and the arching
rosemary barberry that twisted beyond the kitchen door in
Cambridge when Holmes was six. Fondly, through Morag’s
keen, unfaded eyes, he saw all the wonders of women and
porter the old minister had left, too soon, behind. He saw the
dusty yards and barns and the high sun over the hills where
Norfolk had wandered. Reaching with long, scarred hands, he
touched with Martin Callaghan’s fingers, not his own, a son, a
boy with jet-black hair who never was.
He moaned.
A branching labyrinth had opened before him. Beyond
the ragged sounds of his own breath he heard the great
surging hiss of their memories filling the channels, coursing
through them, heaving the weight of their dreams to break
and form again, like waves against a shore. Beneath that
avalanche the long hill shook, the house shook on its old
stone, and the earth and sky for an interminable instant tore.
It seemed only a moment. But in that moment he bound
them, rejoining what they most remembered, gathering all
that elsewhere had been quickly lost, the laughter and the
vital nerve of longing, the snow-mired streets, the sure, swift
hazards of sun and wind. All that had been his hope and
theirs he took and forged, until, clear in its common shape, it
moved before him. A world moved, a substance of shadows,
a substance of rivers and mountains and unbroken light.
Wykeham threw back his head. His black eyes flashed
open.
It was George Tennison who stood. Angrily, seeing no
vision, the old workman pushed his way through the hedge.
But now, when he touched them, the rough, gray limbs fell.
He stood stock-still among the wreckage.
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The lawn was empty; only the cold, useless stumps of
the fires remained. It was not quite day. A bare light shone
on his face.
Harwood had come out beside him. One by one, parting
the hedge, the men followed. Wykeham stood nearby, his
face watchful.
Harwood opened his mouth, but there was no sound.
The men looked at one another. They looked over the
trampled grass and gardens but there was nothing to be seen.
From the depths of the wood there came a cold silence.
The wind began with the dawn.
“Look there!” Norfolk shouted.
At the very edge of the wood the wind sprang. Out of
the wrack of branches a turbulent black stream came turn-
bling. A thousand dark shapes filled the air. Some solitary,
others in knots and wheels, pitching out of the shadows, they
leapt and soared. There were none the same. Shooting out
over the wide brown meadow, their black wings churned a
booming thunder from the air. They rose. Then, all at once,
almost cloud high, they turned and, swept on by the gale,
came direct as an arrow toward the house. Shapes that had
become dim specks grew breasts and arms. Eyes, where they
had been only unheeding shadows, peered out from under
strands of streaming hair and smiled again.
Norfolk rushed out on the lawn. Yet even as he ran it
seemed to him that the sound of the wind had changed. That
it beat against the earth with antic wildness. It tugged at his
sleeves and tore the buttons from his shirt. He placed his
hands on his hips and laughed. Morag had run out after him;
Longford followed.
“Listen,” Norfolk cried. “Listen!”
Morag craned his neck and simply gasped.
He did not know how Wykeham had managed it.
He himself, he hoped, had never wronged them. Yet,
whatever rage was felt against the race of men, whatever
insult had been kept and harbored, by whatever cause, no
longer mattered.
The wind whisked through his fringe of hair. It would
never be still, he knew, could never be held to one thing
without turning. His eyes by now had a curious dreaming
look.
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W1NTERKING
All about him, over the wide bright lawn, the women
were floating down.
Morag flung out his arms.
Plum loomed above him. The white of her breasts, the
white of her neck and shoulders were suffused with a deepening
blush, her cheeks the color of red petticoats. They watched
each other’s eyes. Conscious that they were drawing nearer,
both chuckled. Each leaning forward, they swayed, almost
touching, until one final gust blew them together and they
fell in a quivering jumble on the grass. Plum squeaked.
Morag giggled and nuzzled her ear.
Longford could not bear to look. There had been but one
woman he had loved. He stumbled out into the middle of the
lawn. “Plum,” he wailed, “Oh, Plum!”
Hearing him, the stout, gray-haired woman, the bald
head of the old gentleman supported like a baby in her lap,
looked over her shoulder. As though it gave her exquisite
pleasure just to look at him, she smiled.
All the while Norfolk was pulling little Welsh girls by
their pigtails down from the wind. There were three already
clinging to his knees, grinning merrily. But he was not able to
pull them down quickly enough. He had been thinking of
seven but had only got five when he caught sight of Lizzy
bearing down on him. He gave a mild shrug. With one last
backward wink and more courage than he had thought himself capable of, he accepted Lizzy bravely into his arms.
One after another the women were caught and brought
down. The men who had spent the night on the lawn, hiding
themselves, now got up quickly. The sexton, hoping to get
the best pick, had climbed onto a barrel, where, waving his
thick arms, he barked in a voice of thunder: “She is mine!
She is mine!”
Nobody challenged him. There were only a few dozen
men and the women, it seemed, were without number.
Holmes came down from the porch, staring around
guiltily for his wife. He walked into the noisy yard, his hands
held behind him. Leaves and thistledown were blown over
the edge of the lawn. There for a moment he saw her, drifting
toward the barn, the stationmaster trotting along under her.
Her small, fishlike mouth parted happily. She waved to him
but her thoughts were occupied. Holmes turned away. He
scarcely saw the young woman in the air before him.
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“Good sir,” she called out to him, “why are you Riled
with sorrow?”
He did not want to look but courtesy made him answer.
“I do not know,” he said. He thought of the woman who
had shared his bed. “I had a wife,” he said, “yet even then I
&
nbsp; grieved for something.”
The young woman smiled. “1 was a wife to someone,”
she answered, “but I have been blown about by the wind
today and I do not think, even if I found him, I would take
him back.”
For the first time he truly looked and saw the plain,
brown, eager face. He was almost relieved she was not
beautiful.
“What will come of this?” he asked.
"Like you,” she said, “I do not know.”
“That much is certain,” he answered, but with a brief,
grave smile he drew her down.
The gale had tipped a wagon on its side and sent a line of
haystacks blundering toward the fence. Half of the new
shingles George Tennison had hammered onto the roof had
broken off and lay scattered across a hundred yards of lawn,
“There will be work again,” Olivia told him. George Tennison
nodded:
“We can put it to rights,” he said confidently. Slyly,
pretending to survey the damage, he drew a hand around her
waist.
Something, however, had to be done about the women
who remained in the air. A few too many men, finding much
delight in the women they had landed, had already begun to
slip off with them, leaving their less fortunate sisters stranded
and just beyond reach. The neglected women rolled about
helplessly, bumping and generally getting in each other’s way.
“Bitches! Husband-stealers!” they cried out to the women on
the ground. The village policeman, reinforced by a thin,
dark-haired lad from over the line in West Redding, came
back from the stables with a pair of painters’ ladders and were
kept busy for hours, untangling and drawing them down.
Martin Callaghan took his hands from his pockets. Two
or three times he had been about to go down, but he had
held back, not frightened, but watchful. On the hillside the
bodies of men and women moved over one another in the
grass. From the porch he could hear their soft voices. He
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stepped back. For no clear reason he trembled. Around by
the sheds Harwood was speaking quietly to a young woman.
He was touching her neck. In front of them a small blonde
girl was playing. Even Hunt had not gone off alone. His face
strangely resolute, he sat out under the elms, squeezing the